Track Training Load Without Wearables (sRPE Template)

Most track and field clubs do not own a GPS unit, a lactate analyser or a set of heart-rate straps, and the few athletes who wear a watch all wear different ones. That does not stop you from tracking training load. A coach with a training group of 20 sprinters, jumpers and 800 m runners can measure load with two numbers per session: how hard it was and how long it took.

This guide shows how to set that up for a club, which thresholds to use in the first weeks, and gives you a weekly template you can copy into a spreadsheet or your training diary app today.

Why you can track training load without wearables

Wearables measure external work: distance, speed, heart rate. In track and field that information is patchy anyway. A watch tells you nothing about a shot-put session, under-reads a block-start session where the whole effort lasts four seconds, and cannot see the heavy lifting that sits under a jumper's week.

Session RPE solves this by measuring internal load, the cost to the athlete, in one currency across every session type. Foster and colleagues validated the method against heart-rate-based load in the original work (Foster et al., 2001) and it has been the practical standard in sports without full lab support ever since. For a club coach it has one further advantage: it costs nothing and takes ten seconds per athlete.

The sRPE method in three steps

Step 1: Rate every session 1 to 10

After the cool-down, each athlete rates the whole session on the Borg CR-10 scale. 1 is a walk-through, 5 is hard, 10 is the hardest thing they have ever done. The RPE scale guide explains how to teach the anchors to each discipline group so that a thrower's 7 and a hurdler's 7 mean the same thing.

Step 2: Record session duration in minutes

Count from the start of the warm-up to the end of the cool-down. For a club, that usually means the scheduled training slot minus waiting time. Strength sessions and track sessions on the same day are recorded separately.

Step 3: Multiply and sum per week

Session load = RPE × minutes, expressed in arbitrary units (AU). A 90-minute speed-endurance session at RPE 8 is 720 AU. A 45-minute technique session at RPE 3 is 135 AU. Add every session in the week and you have the weekly load.

That is a realistic week for a 400 m hurdler in the pre-competition phase. A thrower in the same group might sit at 2,200 AU from fewer minutes and heavier lifting, and a 1500 m runner at 3,400 AU from more minutes at lower ratings.

The free weekly template

Copy this structure into a spreadsheet, one tab per athlete, or set it up once in your training diary app. The columns are the minimum that makes the numbers usable later.

Underneath the weekly total, keep three rows: last week's total, the change in percent, and the four-week average. Those three numbers are what you look at on Sunday evening before writing the next plan.

If you prefer the session type as a dropdown, use these categories for track and field: speed, speed endurance, tempo, endurance, hurdles or technique, jumps, throws, strength, competition, recovery. Ten categories are enough to see what kind of load a week contained without turning every entry into a form.

Thresholds for the first eight weeks

You do not need research-grade cut-offs to start. Use these rules of thumb for a club group and tighten them once you know your athletes' normal ranges:

• Week-to-week change: a jump of more than 15 to 20% in weekly load deserves a look at who drove it and why. A planned camp week is fine, an accidental spike from a meet plus a hard Monday is not.
• Four-week comparison: compare this week to the average of the previous four. Over 1.3 times the average is where you start asking questions, which is the idea behind the ACWR.
• Monotony: if every day in a week lands between 350 and 450 AU, the athlete is living in the grey zone. Hard days should be clearly hard and easy days clearly easy.
• Individual baselines: after four weeks, note each athlete's normal weekly range. A 2,200 AU week is light for your 1500 m runner and heavy for your U18 high jumper.

Setting it up in a club

The method fails on logistics, not on maths. Three decisions make it stick:

1. One collection moment. Ratings are entered after the cool-down, before leaving the track. Not at home, not the next morning.
2. One owner. One coach reads the weekly totals on Sunday and flags anyone above the thresholds before Monday's session.
3. Private entry. Athletes rate on their own phone or form. Calling ratings out across the track turns the strongest athlete's number into everyone's ceiling.

Add the daily wellness columns from the template (sleep, soreness, pain) from the start. Load without context is only half the picture, and the pairing of a load spike with worsening soreness is what you actually act on. The post on spotting injury risk trends early shows what those patterns look like in track and field.

Mistakes that break the data

• Changing the duration rule. If one coach counts warm-up and another does not, two athletes doing the same session get different loads.
• Rating days instead of sessions. A morning gym session and an evening track session need two ratings.
• Rounding RPE to the plan. If your athletes' ratings always match the number you wrote on the plan, they are rating the plan.
• Reading totals without session types. 2,700 AU of tempo and 2,700 AU of competition simulation are not the same week.

How Athlog helps

Athlog was built for track and field clubs and does exactly this template, without the spreadsheet. Athletes enter RPE and duration on their phone after each session, and the load, weekly totals and four-week comparison are calculated for you.

• Session load per athlete and per training group, with weekly change shown automatically
• Session types for track and field (speed, tempo, hurdles, jumps, throws, strength) built in
• Sleep, soreness and pain entries next to the load so you see the context in one view
• No wearable needed, works with every athlete in the group from day one

See how it fits a club on the track and field page.

FAQ

Is sRPE accurate enough compared to heart rate or GPS?

For the question a coach actually asks, "is this athlete's load rising faster than they can absorb?", yes. Session RPE correlates well with heart-rate-based load in the original studies, and it covers strength, throws and sprint sessions that heart rate and GPS cannot measure.

What about athletes who already wear a watch?

Let them keep it for their own interest, but record sRPE for everyone so the group uses one currency. Mixing GPS load for three athletes with sRPE for seventeen makes comparison impossible.

How long until the numbers are useful?

Two weeks gives you individual baselines. Four weeks gives you the first useful four-week average and the ability to spot a spike.

Does the template work for youth groups?

Yes, with simpler scales. For U14 and U16 groups many coaches use a 1 to 5 effort scale and multiply by minutes. The important part is consistency, not the scale length.

Start this week

1. Copy the weekly template into a spreadsheet or your training diary app.
2. Teach the RPE anchors to your group in fifteen minutes at the next session.
3. Collect RPE and minutes after every session for two weeks before you judge anything.
4. On Sunday, compare each athlete's week to the previous one and note who changed by more than 15%.